Reading the "Public Use" clause

[RJLipkin at aol.com]

Regarding Rand's status as  a political philosopher or general intellectual, 
I seem to recall the jacket of  Anarchy, State and Utopia touted the work as 
the best contemporary statement of  Rand's philosophy.  (Does anyone have the 
original book jacket? It's  entirely possible that I read that claim in a 
review at the time). The relevance  of this point is that, though Nozick is a much 
more significant philosopher  than Rand, she had a significant impact on 
academic culture in the  fifties and early sixties.  Nozick gave Rand in particular 
and  libertarianism generally an enormous appeal even to some lefties in the 
late  seventies.
 
        As I mentioned in an  earlier response, I think we should be careful 
to distinguish between  philosophical libertarians and economic libertarians. 
For one thing, economic  libertarians might be more inclined to include some 
non-libertarian elements in  their theories with the hope of making them more 
persuasive to non-libertarians,  while keeping their theories mainly 
libertarian.  Most philosophers,  at least in the analytic tradition, are not inclined 
to make such  compromises.
 
        The basic issue here, and  of course I oversimplify, is that 
libertarianism's commitment to liberty permits  coercion in defense of the nation and 
to enforce contracts.  Economic  "libertarianism" embracing redistribution 
needs to explain how safety-net  legislation is compatible with those grounds of 
coercion. Moreover, such  libertarians need to identify and describe what 
principle of governmental  coercion permits safety-net redistribution if defense 
and contract do not.  Finally, if such an additional "libertarian" principle is 
identified, I think it  would be extremely helpful to show why the final 
theory deserves the description  "libertarianism." One can, of course, call 
oneself a "libertarian," while  advocating safety-net redistribution, but surely 
that doesn't make it so.
 
Bobby
 
Robert Justin  Lipkin
Professor of Law
Widener University School of  Law
Delaware
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